The Best Man

by Maggie Osborne

  “Keep practicing,” Frisco said to Les, before he started toward Freddy. “Of course, there’s another side to your argument.” He took the rope out of her hands and adjusted the loop, making it look easy. “If I accepted your position about behaving the way people expected me to, I’d be sitting in a saloon right now, pouring whiskey down my throat and feeling sorry for myself because folks only saw the whiskey and overlooked entirely what a fine fellow it was going into.”

  Freddy stiffened and narrowed her eyes. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself!”

  He handed her back the rope. “I didn’t say you were. I’m just saying there’s another way to look at things.” Twirling a finger, he indicated that she should work the rope. His grin made her stomach tighten. “You don’t have to like me, Miss Roark. But you do have to obey my orders, so let’s see some rope work.”

  She knew what he was going to do when he walked toward her, then around behind, and to her annoyance, her heart skipped a beat. Coming up behind her as he’d done with Les, he waited until she made herself extend her aching arm, then he covered her hand and wrist with his. For a moment Freddy couldn’t move. She stared at his brown hand, and felt the warmth from his palm shoot toward the top of her scalp and down to the soles of her feet.

  “Is something wrong?”

  He stood so close that she felt the length and heat of him along her back. His boots and legs pressed against her skirts, and his breath fluttered a loose tendril on her cheek. Flustered, she tried to imagine why a cattleman, for heaven’s sake, could make her feel hot and shaky inside.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said sharply. His palm was square and hard, rough with calluses, and she could feel the strength in his fingers. He had work hands, capable hands, hands that seemed oddly expressive to her.

  Fighting to concentrate on the rope and not the peculiar tightness in her chest, she struggled to do as he instructed and smothered a sigh of relief when she got the rope spinning above their heads. When he stepped back to adjust the angle of her elbow, his touch seemed intimate and lingering, and she almost lost the momentum of the spin. She would have if he hadn’t immediately called, “Throw it.”

  The rope sailed forward and she stared at it with the same expression of amazed elation as Les had worn. When Freddy threw back her head and gave a shout of happiness, Dal laughed.

  “All right, ladies, keep practicing.” Pulling a watch from his pocket, he consulted the time. “Give it another hour on the ropes, then change into the pants I send up to the house. Drinkwater is going to take you riding.” When Les’s face paled, he raised a hand. “All you have to do today is stay in the saddle for three hours. Those three hours are going to seem like forever. And every day we’re going to add another hour.”

  Twitching the rope in her hands, Freddy watched him stride toward the fence, climb over it, then walk around to the back of the house. Lean wiry men had a willowy grace to them that suggested they might bend in a strong wind. But Dal Frisco had no give in him. His backbone was as steely as his eyes, and that was a problem.

  Somewhere deep inside, Freddy had assumed that she and her sisters would go through the motions, but they wouldn’t really be expected to do much of anything on the cattle drive. The genuine cowboys would do the actual work. She and Les would just ride along beside the herd.

  But now, a terrible suspicion was growing that Dal Frisco didn’t see it that way.

  The brake that Dal Frisco had installed on Alex’s chair was a godsend. She found it so useful that she wondered why the manufacturer didn’t install brakes on all wheelchairs.

  But the brake had not solved the problem of digging a fire pit. And unless she overcame that obstacle, there was no point in even inspecting the chuck wagon that now sat in the kitchen yard. She wouldn’t have to deal with the wagon if she couldn’t dig a stupid fire pit.

  First, she looked around to make sure no one was watching. Then she drew a deep breath and told herself that what she was about to do would not be the first demeaning act in her life, only one more. No one had ever died from humiliation, she reminded herself, then she twisted and squirmed and eased herself down on the ground. Like a worm.

  “Stop it,” she muttered angrily. “Just do what you have to and discover if it works.”

  She had enough knee to crawl, and she crawled to the spade, cursing the skirts that kept tripping her up. Gripping the handle above the bucket part, she stabbed at the ground, and discovered she hardly made a dent in the hard soil.

  “I see the problem.”

  Snapping her head up, she discovered Frisco leaning against the chuck wagon, watching. Scarlet flooded her cheeks, and she couldn’t breathe.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,” he said, leaning over and picking up the spade.

  After slapping her skirts aside, she crawled to the chair, turned, and rested her back against the wheel on the sunny side. She wondered what Payton would say if he could see her now, sprawled on the ground with her pride in shambles, pinning her hopes on a man she wouldn’t have deigned to notice a few short weeks ago. Would Payton take pleasure in her plight? Would he view it as an example of just deserts?

  “All right, try this,” Frisco said, walking around her chair and holding out the spade. She hadn’t heard him return. “I had one of the hands grind the blade into a point.” Sitting down on his heels, he showed her. Now the spade’s edge looked more like a large trowel. “Let’s see if this works better.” He sat fully on the ground. “Chop and pry. What you want to do is pull up the sod. You don’t have to go deep. Here. Try it.”

  Finally, she managed to hack out a piece of sod. It didn’t look like an enormous accomplishment, but that’s how it felt. She rested a minute, letting the heat of exertion recede from her face. When she looked again at the small chunk of sod, her elation faded.

  “Give me the spade and I’ll show you what you’re aiming for. Watch.”

  He pried out several hunks of sod then turned them grass side down in a circle around the shallow hole he’d created. Alex leaned forward. By placing the sod chunks around the perimeter, the pit was suddenly, almost effortlessly deeper.

  “The wrangler will help with the fire pit,” Frisco said, studying her. “Very likely you won’t have to do this too often, but you need to know how and be able to do it when you must.”

  “I think I can,” she said slowly, hating it but knowing that she was going to be digging holes all over the backyard until she got it right. “Give me the spade.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to practice,” he said, standing up. “Right now, I want you to try this crutch.” Reaching over her chair to the other side where she hadn’t seen him put it, he picked up a crutch, then extended his hand to pull her to her feet.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, shuddering in revulsion at the sight of the crutch.

  “We’ve already had this discussion, Mrs. Mills. Give me your hand.”

  Panic tightened her chest. “You don’t understand. If I walk, I betray my husband.”

  A year ago she would have been appalled by what she did next. She pounded the ground with her fists and would have screamed if she hadn’t suddenly recognized how badly she was losing control. Horrified, she covered her face with both hands and inhaled deeply. She had to do this. There was no choice. Not if she hoped for a future that included comfort and dignity.

  “I hate you,” she said softly. “I know this isn’t your fault, but it feels as if it is. You’re making me do something I swore I would never do, so I hate you, Mr. Frisco.”

  “Take my hand.”

  He pulled her upright in one smooth easy movement. Immediately the blood rushed out of her head and his face swam dizzily in front of her eyes. She discovered that her left leg had been weakened during her year in the chair, and suddenly she wasn’t sure that it would support her weight. She would have fallen if Frisco hadn’t grabbed her. Swaying, she clutched his vest.

  “Take your time.” He slipped the crutch under
her right arm and instinctively she leaned on it.

  Gradually the dizziness passed, but now she was aware of the appalling empty space beneath her right knee. No, she couldn’t think about that. If she let herself dwell on her missing limb, the scream would come again, and this time she might not be able to swallow it down.

  Making herself do it, she released his vest and dropped her right hand to the crutch handle. That felt more secure, but she kept her left hand on his chest.

  “When you’re ready, we’re going to walk over to the chuck wagon. You say when.”

  Payton was in his grave, but she was going to walk. The thought made her feel sick.

  “Put your weight on your left leg, move the crutch forward then swing your leg—”

  “I can figure it out,” she snapped. Frisco stepped away from her, watching carefully. The dizziness returned when she realized she was standing alone. “I just…”

  He looked into her eyes. “This afternoon your sisters are going to ride for three hours. When they limp home, they are going to be as stiff and sore as your left leg is going to be.”

  Something flickered in her chest, responding to the bait he dangled. Eyes fixed on the side of the chuck wagon, she bit her lip in annoyance that she had become so transparent. He knew how competitive she was with her sisters.

  She almost fell on the first step. She did fall on the second. Frisco caught her before she hit the ground, scooped up the crutch, and handed it to her when she was upright again.

  She progressed slowly, fearfully, and fell again before she reached the side of the chuck wagon. “Will you help me sit down, please?”

  He eased her to the ground and placed the crutch beside her. Then he joined her, sitting with his long legs folded Indian fashion. “It’ll get easier as time passes and your left leg gets stronger. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to walk with the crutch as often as you can until it feels secure, until it’s second nature.”

  The enormity of what she had done washed over her, swamping her with a mixture of dismay and elation. “I walked,” she whispered, staring at him.

  He nodded and smiled. “Don’t be afraid of it.”

  She straightened her skirts on the ground then rubbed the leg stretched out in front of her. “I’m not afraid of the crutch, Mr. Frisco.”

  “Then why are you resisting so hard?”

  She lowered her head and spoke in a low voice of anguish. “I’m afraid I won’t want to give it up.”

  Chapter 6

  The days turned into a week, then another week and another, and Dal drove the women hard. He knew they were stiff, sore, and hurting, but he didn’t have time to waste accommodating aching muscles. By the end of the third week, the road branding was finished and the brush poppers had increased the size of the herd by an additional two hundred head. In the fourth week it rained, and he knew time was growing short.

  “Except the women aren’t ready,” he said to Grady Cole, his wrangler and longtime friend. They stood beneath the barn eaves, watching rain pelt the ground. In another two weeks, like a miracle occurring before their eyes, new grass would blanket the range, and herds all over Texas would head out, moving north.

  “Them women ain’t never going to be ready.” Pulling back his lips, Grady spit a stream of tobacco juice toward a rain-slick rock. “Women weren’t meant to cowboy. I’ve known you most of your life, and I gotta say this is the damnedest thing you ever did agree to.”

  Dal jammed his hands in the pockets of his slicker and gazed out at the rain. “You know the reasons.”

  “Reckon I do.” Grady removed his hat and scratched his scalp, digging his fingers into a thatch of iron grey hair. “If you wait until them women is ready, you ain’t going nowhere.”

  Dal nodded. “They’re making progress. It just isn’t enough.”

  Yesterday Grady had put Freddy and Les up on cutting horses with disastrous results. Both of them had spent more time picking their bruised selves off the ground than sitting in the saddle. Before the day’s session ended, Grady had been red-faced and apoplectic, and both women had been aching, black-and-blue, and crying.

  But both of them kept getting back on the horses. Dal watched the rain and remembered how it felt to climb back on a mustang who had just tossed you on your butt. As competent hands, neither Freddy nor Les was worth crap and most likely never would be. But he was developing a reluctant respect for their determination.

  He was developing the same grudging respect for Alex. She could move from chair to crutch now without falling, and she could use the crutch smoothly. He’d watched her take down all the utensils from the side of the chuck wagon, build a fire from start to coffeepot hanging above it. A pile of rocks was fluffier than her biscuits, but she insisted that she was working on the problem and making progress.

  He couldn’t fault them for trying.

  Still, they kept him awake nights worrying about their state of readiness, trying to think of quick ways to turn them into something nature had never intended them to be. “Les would quit in an instant if the other two did.” Les was the weakest of the three, the most fearful, and, in his opinion, the most likely to get herself into serious trouble on the drive.

  Grady leaned against the barn wall. “If she don’t get herself killed before we ride into Abilene, I’ll eat my socks. And if I don’t kill her ass of a fiancé before then, I’ll eat your socks.”

  Dal was still burning about Luther Moreland’s decision to allow Ward Hamm to accompany the drive. What the hell was this anyway, a spectator event? It was bad enough that he’d have Moreland and Lola’s representative looking over his shoulder.

  Frowning, he lit a cigar and blew smoke into the rain. “Alex will need a lot of help from you. Even up on a crutch, there’s a lot she can’t manage.”

  Grady squirted tobacco juice through the gap in his front teeth. “That woman don’t know how to make a decent cuppa coffee to save her life.”

  “Unless the coffee can float a horseshoe, you don’t think it’s worth drinking.”

  That left Freddy. She learned quickly, but Dal wasn’t sure that she learned thoroughly. When she had finally managed to lasso the sawhorse steer by herself, she’d seemed to believe that tossing the rope over the horns one time had accomplished her goal and now she could move on to something else. He had an uncomfortable feeling she believed she was learning parlor tricks that she might someday perform on a larger stage.

  A man didn’t get to be thirty-two years old without meeting a few women who caught his eye and rattled his equilibrium. But he didn’t recall running across one like Freddy, who set his mind and body at odds. Every time he brushed against her, his mind said leave her alone, but his body said take her and tame her.

  Grady glanced up at the lights shining inside the ranch house. “We ain’t talked about you,” he commented, hanging a question mark at the end of his statement.

  “I’ve been sober for over a year,” he said, studying the end of his cigar. “When this is over, I plan to buy a ranch in Montana. There’ll be a place for you, if you want it.” He flipped his cigar toward a puddle, then pulled down the brim of his hat. “I guess I’ll have to go get our charges. Doesn’t look like they plan to work today.”

  “Me and the horses will be waiting. Not too eagerly, if you want the God’s truth.”

  Stepping into the chill rain, Dal walked to the house and pounded on the front door. Señora Calvos let him inside, and he asked her to fetch the sisters. When they straggled into the parlor, he stared at their skirts and raised an eyebrow.

  “Grady’s waiting for you two,” he said to Freddy and Les before he turned to Alex. “Why aren’t you out back, practicing your cookery?”

  They looked at each other, then Freddy pointed to the water dripping off his slicker and answered for them all. “It’s raining.”

  “Why yes, I believe it is. And it’s chilly, too. Now that we’ve discussed the weather, shall we return to the subject at hand? Why the
hell are you three taking a day off?” Lowering his eyebrows, he scowled at them. “It’s going to rain on the trail, ladies. Your duties aren’t going to stop just because it’s cold and wet. Now, get moving.”

  Alex rolled her chair forward a few feet. “I cannot possibly make a fire in the rain, Mr. Frisco.” She spoke in the same slightly incredulous tone that Freddy had used.

  He lowered his gaze to hers. “So what do you plan to tell twelve starving cowboys when they show up at your wagon expecting a hot meal? That you’ll feed them only when the sun is shining, and only if the wind isn’t too strong or whenever it happens to be convenient for you?”

  “Do tell us, Alex,” Freddy said in a pleasant voice. “I’m sure the outfit would rather starve than inconvenience you, but I’d love to hear your explanation of why they should have to.”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. “Just shut up,” she hissed at Freddy.

  Dal was in no mood to sugarcoat any speeches. “Plant an umbrella in the ground over your fire site, dig a pit, and build a cook fire. Get that coffee boiling.” He swung toward Freddy and Les. Instantly their expressions altered from the pleasure of hearing Alex reprimanded to stares that suggested they hated his guts. “Mud riding is different from dry riding. Get out there and learn what it feels like.” He spread his hands. “What do I have to say to you to make you realize that a cattle drive is a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four-hour-a-day job? We don’t stop for aches and pains. We don’t stop when the weather turns sour.” He jammed his hat back on his head. “Here’s how it is. The herd is ready to move. There’ll be enough range grass to graze them in about two weeks. But you three are not ready. Mrs. Mills, you have yet to prepare three meals in a day.” He swung toward Freddy and Les. “And you two have yet to stay on the back of a cutting horse through an entire session.”

  “We’re stiff and hurting,” Freddy said hotly. “We have new bruises every day, and—”